Publication

Concerns about the sustainability of forest resources and ecosystems have been expressed almost from the beginning of modern studies of forest management by ecologists, biologists, economists, and other specialists, However, the focus of this concern has gone through several transformations, Environmental scientists have emphasized the maintenance of forest ecosystems in the face of different types of human intervention. Economists and forest managers, on the other hand, have emphasized the capacity of forest systems to provide valued ongoing flows of goods and services for human societies, This paper takes stock of forest resource and ecosystem sustainability from both ecological and economic perspectives. It seeks to identify how these disciplinary perspectives contribute to a better understanding of sustainability, and where the most significant conceptual and factual gaps are found. Of particular interest are two related themes: how economic efficiency and sustainability may differ in their implications for forest system management, and how criteria for forest system sustainability are related to the scale of management decisions (e.g., individual forest site versus region versus the global biosphere).